🧭 BGP Management

Policy-Driven Routing, Anycast & Resilient Interconnect

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the policy brain of your network. SolveForce designs, deploys, and operates BGP so your traffic takes the best path—not just the shortest hop—with security, stability, and observability built in.

Where this fits in the SolveForce model:
🌐 Connectivity (Grammar) → Connectivity • 🖧 Networks & DCs → Networks & Data Centers
☁️ Cloud (Syntax) → Cloud • 🔒 Security (Semantics) → Cybersecurity
🔗 On-ramps → Direct Connect • 🏢 Interconnect → Colocation

🎯 Outcomes (What BGP Management Delivers)

  • Deterministic traffic engineering (TE): control inbound and outbound flows across carriers, regions, and clouds.
  • High availability & fast convergence: multipath/ECMP, BFD, graceful restart, PIC-like patterns.
  • Security by design: RPKI/ROA validation, IRR-based filters, max-prefix, TTL security, MD5.
  • Anycast & global load routing: resilient user entry points for DNS, web, APIs.
  • Observability & evidence: route analytics, BMP feeds, SLO dashboards, SLA audits.

🧩 BGP Building Blocks (Spelled Out)

  • eBGP / iBGP — External / Internal BGP; eBGP to carriers and clouds, iBGP across your AS.
  • AFI/SAFI — Address Families: IPv4/IPv6 unicast, VPNv4/VPNv6 (MPLS Layer-3 VPN), EVPN (Ethernet VPN), BGP-LU (Label Unicast).
  • ASNs — 2-byte/4-byte Autonomous System Numbers; public or private ranges.
  • Route Reflectors (RR) / Confederations — scale iBGP without full mesh.
  • Next-hop-self, MED, Local-Pref — ensure correct next hop; signal preferred exits; set intra-AS preference.
  • Communities — standard/extended/well-known (e.g., no-export, no-advertise); provider-specific action tags.
  • Graceful Restart / NSF — preserve forwarding while control plane restarts.
  • BFD — Bidirectional Forwarding Detection for sub-second failure detection.
  • Add-Path / Multipath — advertise/select multiple best paths for ECMP/load sharing.
  • Max-Prefix — protect sessions from accidental route floods.

🚦 Policy Toolkit (Traffic Engineering You Can Prove)

Outbound control (your AS → the world)

  • Local Preference (LOCAL_PREF): primary knob inside your AS; higher wins.
  • MED (Multi-Exit Discriminator): hint to neighbors which link to prefer.
  • Per-prefix communities: send provider actions like “prefer/backup,” “prepend n times,” “blackhole this /32”.

Inbound control (the world → your AS)

  • AS-PATH prepending: make a path look longer to de-prefer it.
  • Selective advertisement: announce specific prefixes to specific upstreams.
  • Provider communities: leverage carrier docs to influence their path selection.
  • Hot-potato vs. Cold-potato: egress quickly to nearest exit vs. carry traffic further for performance—choose per app.

We document policy as code + diagrams, so intent, attributes, and communities are unambiguous.

🌍 Anycast & Global Load Routing

Publish the same IP prefix from multiple sites/regions so users hit the closest healthy entry point.

  • Use cases: public DNS, CDN/web edges, API front doors, auth services.
  • Health-based withdraw: integrate monitoring → withdraw BGP at sick sites.
  • Consistency: same origin, security policy, and route attributes at every pop.
  • Pairings: Anycast + CDN for content; Anycast + WAF/DDoS for protection.
    → CDN • DDoS Protection

☁️ Cloud On-Ramps & Hybrid (BGP in the Colo)

Tie AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, Google Interconnect into your AS:

  • BGP peering with cloud routers (ASNs); use VRFs to separate private/public flows.
  • Transit hubs: AWS Transit Gateway, Azure ExpressRoute Gateway, Google Cloud Router.
  • Redundancy: dual cross-connects, dual ports (LAG where supported), dual sites/metros.
  • Policy: tag “golden” prefixes, pin critical routes to the nearest on-ramp POP.
    → Direct Connect • Colocation

🧠 MPLS / EVPN / SD-WAN Interop

  • MPLS L3VPN (VPNv4/VPNv6): carrier or DIY core; leak routes between VRFs where needed. → MPLS
  • EVPN: modern L2/L3 service; scalable multi-site VXLAN fabrics and inter-DC mobility.
  • SD-WAN: overlay steering by loss/latency/jitter; BGP advertises underlay/overlays and default-originate where appropriate. → SD-WAN

🛡️ BGP Security Hardening (No Compromises)

  • RPKI / ROA validation: drop invalids; prefer valids.
  • IRR-based prefix filters: build allowlists from route registries.
  • Bogon filters: block unallocated/reserved space; reject private ASNs on eBGP ingress.
  • TTL Security (GTSM) & MD5 auth: mitigate spoofing/session hijack.
  • Max-prefix & dampening: contain leaks and flap storms.
  • uRPF at edges: Unicast Reverse Path Forwarding complements BGP filters.
  • RTBH / Flowspec: Remote-Triggered Black Hole and BGP Flowspec to signal scrubbing or drop attacks at scale. → DDoS Protection

Security evidence (RPKI state, filter hits, max-prefix events) is shipped to SIEM/SOAR. → SIEM / SOAR

🔎 Observability & Evidence

  • BMP (BGP Monitoring Protocol): export RIB updates to collectors.
  • Streaming telemetry: neighbor state, prefix counts, path changes.
  • NetFlow/IPFIX & pings/TWAMP: verify data-plane matches control-plane intent.
  • SLOs & alerts: convergence time, flap rate, invalid/filtered counts, path asymmetry.
  • NOC tie-in: incidents open automatically on policy breaches or session failures. → NOC Services

🧪 Change Safety & Maintenance

  • Staged policy: simulate (route-maps in test VRFs), then roll in rings.
  • Graceful Shutdown / GR: drain traffic before session resets.
  • Add-Path/multipath: reduce path churn impact; keep ECMP stable.
  • Backout plans: snapshot configs, version control, and automatic rollback on error.
  • Blackhole drills: RTBH/Flowspec exercises with your scrubbing partner.

📐 SLO Guardrails (Recommended)

  • Convergence: < 3–5 s for edge failures (with BFD); < 30 s core policy changes.
  • Session health: flap rate < 2/hour per peer; max-prefix never hit in steady state.
  • Anycast reachability: health-based withdraw < 60 s end-to-end.
  • Security posture: 100% RPKI validation enabled on Internet-facing peers; 0 invalids accepted.

Dashboards and weekly reports show trends, incidents, and recommended TE/security adjustments.

🧾 Implementation Checklist

  1. Inventory & ASNs: peers, ports, IXPs, cloud on-ramps, 2B/4B ASNs.
  2. Addressing: IPv4/IPv6 plans; avoid overlaps with VPC/VNet CIDRs. → IPv6 Migration
  3. Policy intent: inbound/outbound TE, hot vs. cold potato, Anycast, blackhole design.
  4. Filters & security: RPKI/IRR filters, bogon lists, GTSM, MD5, max-prefix.
  5. Redundancy: dual cross-connects, dual carriers, dual metros; BFD and ECMP.
  6. Monitoring: BMP collectors, telemetry, NetFlow/IPFIX; SIEM hooks. → SIEM / SOAR
  7. Runbooks: peering turn-up, leak response, RTBH/Flowspec, change windows.

🔄 Where BGP Fits (Recursive View)

1) Grammar — BGP governs paths in Connectivity.
2) Syntax — stable routes feed Cloud migrations and DR.
3) Semantics — filters/RPKI preserve truth in Cybersecurity.
4) Pragmatics — insights steer apps with SolveForce AI.
5) Foundation — consistent naming/policy under Primacy of Language.
6) Map — cataloged & cross-linked in the SolveForce Codex.

📞 Engage SolveForce for BGP Management

Design TE policies, secure your edges, and prove SLOs with auditable evidence.

Related pages:
Direct Connect • Colocation • Wavelength Services • MPLS • SD-WAN • DDoS Protection • SIEM / SOAR • NOC Services • Knowledge Hub